With all that is going on in Egypt these days, it is hard to take our eyes off of the Constitutional Assembly and the constitution drafting process. Yet if you look around the country, you will begin to see that the members of the constituent assembly are not the only ones mobilizing to secure support for broad-based reforms in the country. Last month, Egyptian doctors began to protest to demand better pay and working conditions.

Doctors have been on a partial strike since October 1 to demand an increase in health spending to 15 percent of the state budget, wage increases, and better healthcare standards and security at hospitals. A salary for a recently graduated doctor is 200 Egyptian pounds ($32.70) a month. But low pay is not the only thing new doctors have to worry about. Recently, there were two separate incidents where assailants attacked hospitals in Shubra (Cairo), and in the Al-Qantara Sharq (governorate of Isamaila).

The problems that plague the healthcare industry are endemic to the public sector as a whole, where public sector employees are paid very low salaries compared to other industries. With the dire state of the economy, it will be difficult for the Morsi Administration to raise salaries for doctors and other public sector employees without significant cuts in other areas. So where should the money come from? In the long run, the only solution will be to fix the underlying issues of corruption and bad governance.

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